05 July 2009

Charging Phones With Bicycles

The famous Roskilde Festival ends today after four days of cracking concerts, sunshine and good times. First held in 1971 it's one of the premiere music festivals in the world. This year featured a good crop of bands but there is so much action that it's hard to keep track.

One enviro-friendly gimmick was charging your mobile telephone with bicycles. The Climate Community 'neighbourhood' at the festival hooked up bikes to a generator and let festival-goers charge their phones using human-power.

It took about 7 minutes of cycling to charge a phone. Interestingly, it would take about an hour and a half of cycling to generate enough energy to boil water for a cup of coffee. A 15 minute shower and you'll be cycling for 50 hours.

One of the great traditions at the Roskilde Festival is entirely sustainable. The Nude Race is one of the most popular activities and the winner gets interviewed all over the press.

This being Denmark, nudity is not considered odd or strange so the photos of the race are shown in newspapers and on the national news. The above photo is from a newspaper and you can see the whole slide show on their website.

Kilometres cycled by Copenhageners so far today

Copenhagenize.com is the blog of Copenhagenize Design Company. Online since 2007 and highlighting the cycling life in Copenhagen and around the world.

40 years ago Copenhagen was just as car-clogged as anywhere else but now 41% of the population arriving at work or education do so on bicycles, from all over the Metro area. 56% of Copenhageners themselves use bicycles each day. They all use over 1000 km of bicycle lanes in Greater Copenhagen for their journeys. Copenhagenizing is possible anywhere.